Rat Queens, Vol. 1 » Graphic Novel Review

I have owned the first volume of Rat Queens for over a year now. I can't believe it took me this long to pick it up!

I ADORED it. It is dark, gory, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. The artwork is stunning, and I loved the diverse group of women that made up the squad of Rat Queens.

Our Rat Queens

Betty



Betty, our Hippy Smidgen Thief, was dueling it out with Dee for my favorite character. She had some of the funniest lines, and she never failed to make me laugh.

Dee



Dee, our Atheist Human Cleric, is my official favorite. She has badass healing powers, and her social skills speak to my soul. This panel is my absolute favorite. That is straight up me at a party. Also I have to admit, I do have a teensy girl crush on Dee. BUT WHO WOULDN'T, amirite?

Hannah



Hannah is our Rockabilly Elven Mage. And she is SO COOL. I mean, look at them tats.

Violet



Violet, our hipster dwarven fighter, is a kickass fighter. And according to this installment, she and Dee have the most interesting backstory by far.

These women are unapologetically themselves. They are bawdy, vulgar, arrogant and badass. They aren't wearing skintight spandex, their bodies look like the bodies of women. I shouldn't be this excited by something this simple, but you don't often see women represented in graphic novels/comics in a realistic manner.

The volume was quick-paced, it threw you into the action right away. While I usually enjoy that, it did take me a while to recognize the individual characters. I also didn't necessarily feel like all of the characters were developed equally. I had a harder time getting to know and remember both Hannah and Violet. Hopefully that will be rectified in the next installment!

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Are there any graphic novel series that you enjoy? Let us know in the comments below!

Daughter of Smoke and Bone » Review

This book, written by one of my favorite authors, did not make a great impression the first time around.  Although you don't know it at first, this first book in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy [spoiler]truly starts in medias res.[/spoiler] There is a lot going on, as well, and it's difficult to get a grip on during the first read-through.  The first time I read the book, I made a lot of incorrect assumptions, like [spoiler]that we were dealing with insta-love. We're not.[/spoiler] I also disliked our main character, Karou, thinking she was a tiresome, self-impressed hipster chick, which she kind of was (in the first book), but when you know all of her backstory, Karou becomes immeasurably more likable. Unfortunately, it takes a while for that backstory to come into play.

What made me push through Daughter of Smoke and Bone was the wealth of positive reviews for the book and my enjoyment of Taylor's short story collection, Lips Touch: Three Times.  I decided I wasn't giving the series the good ol' college try and made another attempt.

I am so glad I did.  Because, while I'm hesitant to call the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy something like a 'masterpiece,' it is most definitely an 'achievement.'  Laini Taylor's imagination is just insane.  It's a pleasure to dive into and swim through.  She writes well, treating us to surprising little similes and turns of phrase that are so rarely found in YA these days.

About Laini Taylor's style — it's very distinct.  It's distinct to the point where if I read a piece of hers without her name attributed, I'm very certain I could identify it. That's really remarkable, when you think about it. (Remarkable on Taylor's part, not mine :P) So many authors struggle with finding a distinct voice, and Laini Taylor just nails it. Really, the only author I can think of that Taylor shares similarities with is Holly Black, and even then, there are strong differences between the two.

Taylor's style mixes dreamy elements of fantasy with modern settings — romance and humor sprinkled throughout.  There are, of course, Taylor's signature similes and unusual turns of phrase aplenty, although these are much thicker in her short stories than in her novels.  And then, there is always a dark undercurrent of aggression, greed, and sexual violence. I'll get to those issues more in my review of Days of Blood and Starlight, but for now I'll just say that Taylor most definitely has a strong thematic message throughout her body of work.

Anyways, about the actual book.  It opens with a blue haired girl, Karou, being attacked by a vampire.  When I first read the book I was all, "NO! Not another vampire book!" But it's a false alarm — Karou's ex-boyfriend is a street performer/tour guide who dresses like a vampire. Karou, her faux-vampire ex-boyfriend, and her close friend, Zusana, all live in Prague — a nicely exotic setting.  Karou and Zusana are art students and I'd now write that Karou lives a pretty normal life... only she doesn't.  She is replete with mystery.  She knows martial arts, keeps a knife in her boot, speaks tons of languages, never seems to dye her perfectly blue hair, and good luck follows her everywhere.

We find out the answers to all of these mysteries soon enough, but I found it overwhelming to take in at first.  Laini Taylor has created an immense story and it's a lot to take in.  This is unquestionably my main complaint with the book, but I couldn't tell you how to fix it.  I'm not sure that Taylor didn't do the best job possible easing us into her huge concept.  It was confusing as all hell at first.

Another weakness of the story lies in the *first read-through* of the romance.  When reading the romance for the first time, there are so many misconceptions because the backstory is just not there.  [spoiler]You don't even know that there IS a backstory.[/spoiler] So, when I first read the book, I thought, this is intolerable!  It isn't, actually — it's just way more palatable and intriguing once you know more about what's going on in the story.

Overall, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a very good beginning to a great series.  There are definitely some issues with how the immensity of information is introduced, but don't ask me how Taylor could have done better.  I give this first book in the trilogy four stars.



 

Court of Fives | Review

Court of Fives started out so, so wonderfully.  For the first third of the book, I was totally and completely enraptured.  So, understandably I think, I was a little miffed when the book took a turn for the worse right before its halfway point.  What Court of Fives did well, it did well.  Which made its mistakes that much more disappointing.

So, what it's about... It's not a close enough interpretation of Little Women to be a retelling, but Court of Fives is definitely inspired by Louisa May Alcott's classic.  Both books feature families with four daughters and a military-enlisted father.  Elliott's daughters have names that correspond closely with Alcott's famous Mary, Beth, Jo, and Amy. The "Jo" character has a passionate hobby. However, that's where the salutation ends.  The connection is a touch random and amounts to nothing but a startling revelation if you went into reading not knowing about it.  Personally, I think the story could have stood up just fine without the matchy-matchy names.

Court of Fives is set in an empire that's a little Egyptian, a little Persian, a touch Venetian, etc.  There is some mechanical fantasy thrown in as well, akin to steampunk, most prominently in the form of the Fives, a competitive obstacle course. Our protagonist, Jo, I mean Jes, secretly trains for the Fives when she can escape from her large family.  Speaking of her family... draaaaama.  Jes and her sisters are racial mixes.  Their father is a lowborn, yet high achieving, son of the empire. The girls' mother is their father's concubine, incapable of being being his wife because her heritage is that of the empire's conquered people.

The whole situation is a tense, awkward mess and it was an utter pleasure to read about.  I'd say the family dynamics were, hands down, the best part of Court of Fives.  I was on the edge of my seat to find out what would happen next with the faux-Marches, especially when the seediness of having a live-in concubine and a mess of illegitimate daughters gets in the way of the father's burgeoning military career.  I'm getting shivers just thinking about it.

As for our protagonist, Jes, I'm going to get real for a second.  Unlike everyone else on planet Earth, Amy is my favorite March sister.  I loathe self-appeciative Jo.  Elliott's Jes is similar enough in personality to Alcott's Jo that my distaste crossed over.  I could tolerate Jes and her spunkiness tolerably well until the character made, in my opinion, a terrible decision that careened the story away from the direction I wanted it to go in.  Depending on whether or not you agree with Jes's decision can make or break Court of Fives for you, I think.

All in all, there were some highly successful elements to Court of Fives that make it worth reading.  However, I'll be curious to see if other readers object as strongly as myself concerning Jes's decisions.

 

The Diviners Review

I've been thinking...  I've started recording and posting video reviews, but have come up against some problems.  First, I never get to say everything I want about a book in the video.  Under the harsh red recording eyeball I lose my train of thought more often than not.  I'm still figuring out how to prepare for speaking out loud to my computer in an empty room about books.  Second, I don't want to post a bunch of videos to the blog without offering some meatier content.

So, I decided that with each video review, I'm going to write a review to go along with it.  That way, I'll produce a more thorough review and have fuller posts! Perfect!

So, The Diviners. It was published in late 2012,  and its critical reception was largely favorable.  This book was written by Libba Bray, who enjoyed commercial success with her A Great and Terrible Beauty series, and critical acclaim with her novel Going Bovine.  The book follows a young woman, Evie O'Neil, during 1926.

Like Bray's protagonist of Terrible Beauty, Gemma Doyle, Evie O'Neil is a girl with special powers.  She can psychically read objects.  She has trouble keeping what she learns from this power a secret, however, and soon lands in hot water when she makes an accusation against a prominent citizen in the Ohio town where she resides.  She's bustled off to live with her uncle in New York City.  Her uncle, it so happens, owns and operates an occult museum.

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.”

Despite her own gifts, Evie is skeptical of the museum and her uncle at first.  But when her uncle is called as a specialist during a murder investigation, she winds up falling down a supernatural rabbit hole.

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”

I give the book three and a half stars.  While it had fantastic elements, there were some strong weaknesses as well.  In regards to the well done aspects, the book's setting is overwhelmingly the best part of the book.  You can tell that Bray put in an enormous amount of research to get the right 20's atmosphere down.  A lot of times, when reading historical fiction, the modern language and voice pull me out of the period.  But, with The Diviners, every detail helps add to the jazz age allure.

The book also has a strong protagonist.  Evie is a great character — a flapper, smart, sassy, and vivacious.  She is always ready with a wisecrack.

“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?”

“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.”

Evangeline — a hilarious name for this skeptic character — dazzles brightly off the page, while still retaining emotional depth.

“She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.”

Now, onto the stuff I didn't like so much.  I think the book needs huge amounts of editing.  The story follows two other characters, Memphis Campbell and Theta Knight.  Three points of view were largely extraneous, I thought.  The book would have been stronger with a good deal of extraneous storyline shaved off, and extra narrative perspectives don't make the cut.

Second, I thought the romance was bland! This isn't a critical failure on the book's part, or anything, but a compelling romance makes a golden story, in my opinion.  I'm waiting to see how things unfold in the sequel in this regard.

So, that's that.  I don't go into greater depth in my video, but there is the added bonus of facial expressions!